You Need to Read (Islamic Lectures Collection)

It's not a matter of guesswork

MashAllah there are many women, we try to make the house look clean, we try to make it as presentable as possible, while we are doing all those chores, we have to keep in mind that we also have to scrub that heart. Allah does not look towards the faces, the wealth, the external, Allah looks at the actions, the hearts. It's about polishing those hearts. That is why you are here. Yes, we are here for ilm (Islamic knowledge) but we are here to wash away the old and stubborn stains of sin.

A matter of what we give value to. Many, many times, it's not about leaving something absolutely. We are not asking you to leave the dunya and sit in a dark room, that's not the life of a mu'min. The Rabbani life, when you set on to achieve it, you have looked beyond the category of choosing between halal and haram. In Rabbani life, haram is completely out of question. The real choice we have to make in our life, while doing halal things, that is the choice we face. The most critical choice. It differentiates a good student from a bad student of ilm. For example, it is halal to read the news once, but the random scrolling could be spent in revising a hadith lesson or reading istaghfar. This is where the difference lies in deciding how to spend 5 minutes. I have 5 minutes before going to bed, I want to have the connection with Allah, I decide to do something for deen. Instead of randomly scrolling on the Internet and seeing things which are halal. Both options are halal but how is our approach supposed to be? Is this better for our dunya or for our akhirah? Is this going to benefit me in my akhirah and the khair of my dunya? If it's not going to benefit my akhirah, why am I going to waste five minutes of my life? We should not be heedless of this.

These many years of my life, I choose to spend 5 minutes on a futile activity, it adds up. Imagine how much noor there will be in our life just for choosing the taqwa option as opposed to the bare minimum halal option. Imagine how much noor and mercy will descend on that person. We are seeking this special noor from Allah.

Again we are coming back to the point of time. Surah Al Asr, Allah presents to us very beautifully, that we don't have time. Imagine if you borrowed something from your neighbour, e.g. a washing machine. You will wash the maximum amount of clothes in the limited time you have the washing machine, to have maximum benefit. That is exactly the example of dunya. Allah gave us 50, 60, 70, 90, 100 or 120 years of our life, we borrowed this time to take the most benefit out of it. It really depends on us.

It is not a matter of guesswork. What do I mean by that? Allah from Quran and Hadith and Sunnah has given us absolute hidayah (guidance), and how scholars have understood that Quran and Hadith, that is our hidayah and defines the priorities for our life. It is not a matter of guesswork. We cannot get this wrong. We have to re-evaluate how we think.

[Spiritual Lodge 29.8.2015 by Alimah M. Farooqi]